


in the face of blind optimism

by ariadnes



Series: i don't want to rest in peace [3]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: (Mostly) Works as a Stand Alone, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Developing Relationship, F/M, Family Dynamics, Gen, Guilt, Implied Jonathan Crane/Bruce Wayne, Jim Gordon is Happy, Mental Health Issues, Minor Jim Gordon/Barbara Kean/Leslie Thompkins, POV Multiple, Post-Season/Series 05, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-16 07:06:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19313116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes/pseuds/ariadnes
Summary: Jim Gordon had been enjoying a quiet day in the office.Then Jonathan Crane was arrested.





	1. where's your mother?

**Author's Note:**

> For the most part, this fic can stand alone from the other in the series. It may be helpful to know, for this chapter at least, that in this AU Bruce and Jonathan have had a handful of clandestine meetings since 4x22 and that Jonathan convinced Bruce to stay in Gotham after 5x11.

Reunification was well underway when Jonathan decided to slip from the safety of his hidey-hole and face the world.

His days of lawless, fear-driven anonymity were far behind him and, from what information he'd managed to gather, Jim Gordon—now  _Commissioner_ Gordon—was cracking down on the inhabitants of the former Dark Zone with great bias. The freaks and monsters who'd run the city for the past year were sent scurrying away from their strongholds and back into Arkham or Blackgate, and those who'd joined them as underlings, searching for power or blood, went back to their nine to five jobs, putting their dark days firmly behind them.

It was both pathetic and infuriating to watch.

Secretary Walker had destroyed his original headquarters during her airstrike on the Narrows, and with its destruction came the deaths of many of his followers. It was a loss, of course, but not a crippling one. In many ways, the bombing had actually helped him with—downsizing. Gotham was being born anew, after all. As more and more light began to flood the previously dark corners of the city, the more and more followers he was sure he'd lose, the call of domestic life too strong. And that just wouldn't do.

He had no way of knowing how his followers would react to reunification. He had no idea if they'd shed their burlap suits for the half-hearted protection of renewed law and order. That was the problem. People, more often than not, were fickle, and he had no time to dwell on his follower's loyalty or lack thereof. He had other things, grander things, to worry about, and so the few people who'd managed to escape the bombing with him had been— _disposed of._

Only once they'd outlived their usefulness, of course. He wasn't one for needless waste.

He wondered, only vaguely curious, if anyone had found their bodies yet.

If somebody had, he was sure Gordon had already added it to his ever-growing list of wrongs. The thought made something dark and furious rear up inside of him. As if Gordon could lecture Jonathan about  _wrongs_. As if Gordon wasn't floating through life on the high of his own moral superiority.

Perhaps this time around he'd get a trial. The first time he'd been arrested—following his reintroduction into society after years locked away in Gotham Asylum—no one thought he was healthy enough, sane enough, to stand in the courtroom. Private accommodations had been made and, with a speed that probably implied some illegal under hangings, he was shipped off to Arkham. He was just another monstrous thing left to rot by a system that deemed him too barbed and too broken for general society. Rehabilitation—what a joke.

The rest was history.

And, as it tended to do, history was repeating.

The current trend, so to speak, in Gotham's legal system was, ironically enough, trials. Not just the farces they usually put on for those with power and money, but real trials, with judges and jurors shipped in from across the country, supposedly free from the corruption that Gotham's own judges were notoriously plagued with. They were, naturally, just another way for the government to reestablish its power over the city—and they also served to add fuel to the fire that was the nation-wide media circus around Gotham's year in so-called "No Man's Land."

Where all the concerned humanitarians had been when Gotham ran out of clean water and carved itself into gang-run factions, Jonathan didn't know, but, now that the city had been deemed safe enough for civilians to reenter, well-intentioned do-gooders were coming in droves. They were all very self-satisfied. Gratingly so. And, the one thing they enjoyed more than any other was talking about the way ordinary people let themselves become monsters for the sake of survival.

Jonathan hated them.

He hated the way they trivialized and rationalized the madness that Gotham ran on. He hated the way they simpered over the radios, splicing up horrors for the consumption of the average white-bread listener. He hated, most of all, the way they dug into his past, analyzing him like he was a puzzle and not a person, speaking about him like he was a tragedy of someone else's making and not a self-made monster.

They spoke about him like he was a victim. They focused on the ways he was a danger to himself rather than to others as if they had any authority on the matter. They destroyed his notoriety—ripped it away from him the moment they began to  _sympathize_  with him, or, really, the caricature of a lost soul they imagined him to be.

One day, he would kill them. All of them. It was that certainty alone, that kept him from making a reckless decision.

At the moment, he was underequipped to do anything. His suit hadn't survived Walker's bombing and he'd already used up all but one of the canisters of fear toxin he'd left around the city, in case of an emergency. Worse, with the city as occupied as it was, there was no way for him to create a new batch of his toxin. He may operate well in the darkness, but a thief he was not. And, the longer reunification went on, the less likely it was that he'd find aid from his former associates, each member of the Legion trying to save their own skin.

Jonathan couldn't exactly blame them. They were all pretty much in the same boat, and, if he was being honest, had his fortunes been better he doubted that he would go out of his way to help any of them. Survival of the fittest and all that.

The government needed scapegoats, after all, and who better to serve that purpose than the people who took advantage of the city when it was at its weakest.

Already, the GCPD had managed to pick up Firefly, who had, in comparison to Jonathan, done very little to the city, beyond property damage and the occasional murder. Her trial had been broadcasted across both television and radio stations, and, from what he'd managed to catch, the prosecution worked itself to the bone, all in an effort to turn aside her insanity defense—they would never say it outright, but everyone with a brain knew they were trying to get her on the electrical chair.

They'd nearly succeeded, too, until—and Jonathan was still reeling from it—Bruce Wayne, himself, offered a scathing testimony that kept her safe not only from the death penalty but from Arkham and Blackgate, as well. Bruce helped her get shipped off to a fancy, Wayne Enterprises-sponsored mental health facility, and, even though Jonathan thought the legality of it all was kind of fuzzy, no one, outside of the prosecution, seemed to bat an eye at his intrusion.

Jonathan probably shouldn't have been as surprised as he was by Bruce's interference. He already knew that he cared about people who would otherwise be seen as beyond care and that he did it with a sincerity that, from anyone else, would have felt false. Cloying. Knowing about his tooth-aching goodness and seeing it in action, however, were two very different things.

He was far more accustomed to the tightly-reigned brutality Bruce operated with. He enjoyed watching as it took him over, as he let his darkness come out to play. He was still scared of it, still scared of himself. He was still trying to be a hero, but, Jonathan also had faith that after their last conversation he'd managed to tick Bruce's trajectory, his point of metamorphoses, far enough off course that he'd be open to Jonathan's own transformative ideas.

He could be so great. He would be. 

_They_ would be.

It was going to be a slow process, he knew. Bruce was still recovering from his ordeal with Jeremiah Valeska and whatever events led to him blowing up what remained of his family legacy. He'd be skittish to the idea that Jonathan was trying to change him, to transform him into something he wasn't.

That wasn't the case, though. Or, at least, not entirely. Jonathan was not Jeremiah, nor did he want to mimic his schemes—all of them vibrant and visceral and utterly wretched. Jonathan had no desire to warp Bruce into an ideal partner. He did not want some Stockholm Syndrome, counterfeit copy of Bruce, broken down and reshaped into a personal ideal. He wanted Bruce to willingly entrench himself in his darkness. He wanted to subvert the world's expectations.

He wanted Bruce to realize his full potential on his own—to take the city however he wanted to—to let all the rot in his head out, once and for all, to release all the hate in his heart, to be blindingly, deliciously selfish, for once.

He wanted Bruce to accept a partnership between them. It was the ideal outcome. The  _inevitable_  outcome.

After all, Bruce was already starting to test the boundaries of how far his influence spread. Wayne Enterprises was pretty much funding Gotham's reunification, and there wasn't a person in the city who hadn't received some type of aid from the company. It was a smart move on his part. When Gotham was back to it's corrupt and apathetic self, people would remember who had helped them in their time of need. Through his acts of goodwill—which were made, knowing Bruce, without any ulterior motive—he was essentially buying the city. Now, to get him to realize that much.

Soon, he'd see what Jonathan already had: where Bruce Wayne went, the world followed; what Bruce Wayne said, the world believed.

He'd figure it out, sooner rather than later, especially if he paid any attention to the way the various radio stars talked about him, but a push in the right direction probably wouldn't hurt him too badly. 

Besides, Jonathan never claimed not to be selfish. He knew he was. He knew it from the moment his father started work on his cure to fear—his life's work—and he stuck his nose up at it. He knew it from the moment he saw Bruce, felt his hands around his throat all those months ago, and could only bring himself to  _want_. 

Gordon was on a warpath and, even though he'd had some luck rounding up petty criminals and gang leaders, Jonathan had a feeling he'd jump at the chance of capturing him. What would his arrest mean to the city? What would his arrest mean to Bruce? He'd spoken at Firefly's trial despite having no personal connection to her. Would he try and save Jonathan from a similar fate? Would he play the hero that he kept denying he was?

Musing about uncertainties wouldn't get him anywhere. 

He needed to see Bruce for himself. He needed to see if Bruce was as— _preoccupied_ with him as he was. He needed to convince him that he was on his side. Though, that shouldn't be too hard, considering he was. For the most part. 

How to convince him of it, however, was another problem altogether. 

Slowly, a plan started to form in his mind. It was a bit heavy-handed, maybe, and focused entirely around Bruce's desire for vengeance—or, justice, if he wanted to call it that. It was also somewhat risky, considering the emphasis, however distant, on Jeremiah and his failed creationist plans. Bruce never seemed to react well to mentions of either Valeska, but bringing up Jeremiah was a surefire way to get his blood boiling. He was lucky Jonathan wasn't the jealous type. 

So, it was with his plan in mind, that he shrugged on the patchwork coat he'd salvaged from some back-alley and firmly clenched his last canister of fear toxin in hand. The city was not as busy as it would have been before the bridges blew, but, as he made his way into a well-populated, less-destroyed area of the downtown, he figured there were enough people out to serve his needs. They all looked rather carefree, in his eyes. Considering the affluence of the area, they were probably all wealthy enough to have made it out of the city before it fell apart, and, as such, they avoided the horror that plagued those less fortunate than them.  

He was happy to change that. 

As he made his way to the center of the hustle and bustle, he caught the eye of a middle-aged woman pushing a stroller. She smiled at him. 

Jonathan smiled back, thinking of Bruce and how he'd react to the news he had about Jeremiah's old assistant. Apparently, she'd been seen running around town sans her usual face paint, causing all types of mayhem. 

Then, still smiling, and still looking at the woman, he released the stopping mechanism on his canister. There was no fanfare to it. Screams followed, as they always did. 


	2. fall down dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lee's busy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for briefly mentioned suicidal idealization and some internalized homophobia.

Lee was busy. 

Also, the sky was blue and the ocean was wet. What was new?

She'd been busy ever since she'd crawled out of the Dark Zone, blood under her nails and a foreign scar aching under her shirt, her memory one giant blank except for the horrific, nausea-inducing shutter-picture of Ed plunging a knife into her abdomen. Even that was hazy to her. The memory was formed mostly around her residual pain and phantom reconstruction of the night. There was nothing concrete to it. 

She knew what had happened, of course. Ed had stabbed her. Ed had  _killed_ her. Though, first, she'd killed him. Turnabout was fair play. 

Logically, she knew what had happened. She pieced her death together through an amalgamation of second-hand sources. Jim's case files had been—odd. It was strange to read about her disappearance in words that weren't her own. It was strange to think that if she hadn't been brought back no one would have found out what became of her. Then there were the personal testimonies she'd heard, both from Ed and Oswald, the later who'd apparently been the one to fund their resurrections. 

Some days, when the pain flared up—all of it psychosomatic, she knew, as, for his many, many faults, Doctor Strange did good, if amoral, work—she wished that Oswald hadn't bothered. She wished that he'd left her to decompose in the Narrows, maggots crawling through her skull.

She had been dead, in every way that counted, and no matter what the norm was in Gotham she believed in the finality of that. With her line of work, she had to. Any other attitude towards death and she'd probably go insane—or more insane.

She tended to brush those darker thoughts away. They never seemed to linger much. They came and went with an unpleasant compulsion, gnawing through her reason and sense. Lee was not someone to dwell on such negativities, though. She had to help people. If she couldn't, if she was in some way indisposed, then she was failing, and since she often held people's lives in her hands she could not afford failure of any kind.  

So, she compartmentalized. She adapted. 

She focused on greener pastures, so to speak. 

Jim helped with that. Loving him had always been easy, if frustrating. And, if Lee was being honest, she'd loved him for years, now. Probably since their date to the circus. She'd loved him through conflict after conflict, and she loved him, however distantly, even when she loved Mario, even when she partnered with Ed. It had taken them far longer to make things work than she would have ever predicted all those years ago when she was a bright-eyed medical examiner. 

They'd done it, though. They made it to their supposed happy ending as husband and wife. Sometimes she had trouble believing it. 

And that was before the baby was thrown into the mix. 

Jim was a father. Lee was a step-mother, or if she gave into Barbara's surprisingly warm, half-teasing demands, Auntie Lee. She was fine with both titles, really. She was fine. Happy. At times, however, when her consistent, overwhelming relief over Barbara allowing Jim and her to co-parent at her side waned, forcing her to drop her rose-tinted worldview, she found herself—borderline unsatisfied. 

Close to yearning, but not quite. It wasn't out of jealousy. She was familiar enough with that feeling to spot it from miles away, especially when it came in regards to Barbara Kean. It was something softer. It was something tender and delicate and unavoidable, something that belonged in the space between her teeth, something that she would, inevitably, shatter. 

Jim and Lee were married. That should have been enough, but it wasn't because they weren't just Jim-and-Lee anymore. They were Jim and Lee and Barbara. Or, they tried to be. It was half-hearted. Barbed. Sometimes, though, when Barbara stayed over late for a glass of wine after dropping off Babs, the lines between the three of them twisted up. Wires were crossed. They became, simultaneously, both Jim-and-Lee and Jim-and-Barbara. 

And why wouldn't they?

Jim and Barbara had more history than Lee would ever understand. It was always laid out between them, an uncrossable point of divergence. It had been buried under years of hurt and resentment, but, once upon a time, there had been love. Real love. A voice that sounded suspiciously like Sofia Falcone would occasionally whisper in the back of her head that since they'd had a daughter together all they need to have the perfect, all-American dream was Lee out of the picture. 

The thought hurt, but not for the reasons she imagined it should have. Maybe she'd been wrong. Or, at least, halfway. 

Maybe she was a little bit jealous. It just wasn't Barbara she was jealous of. 

There were limits, however, even for Lee, who was a proponent of open communication, to how much she was willing to share, and her relationship with Barbara, tentative and new as it was, wasn't something she was willing to think about in any detail. She would worry about her unexpected and unexplainable feelings for Barbara Kean when Gotham seemed less likely to collapse into mob rule at any moment. That was to say, of course, that she'd ignore them forever. 

She was busy, after all.

She was  _always_ busy. She'd been busy before her resurrection when the people of the Narrows were depending on her to keep them safe. She'd been busy after her resurrection, too, working from the pop-up hospital. The Green Zone, while marginally safer than every other district in the city, was still wrought with sickness. And she was busy now, as the city finally started to rebuild itself.

It wasn't like people suddenly stopped needing doctors once the government decided it was time, at long last, to intervene and offer them much-needed aid. In fact, with the sudden influx of previously displaced citizens returning to Gotham and with the gradual dissipation of the gangs who ran the city for the past year, more people needed her help than ever before. She wasn't the only doctor in Gotham, of course, but she was one of the most trusted—something of a callback to her time as Queen of the Narrows.

People who would be otherwise wary of placing their lives or the lives of their families in the hands of a woman married to the police commissioner came to her for help. She had an obligation to them. She'd lost sight of that once. Never again.

And so came about her temporary clinic. 

She'd set up shop in the heart of the Narrows, not far from her old base of operations, repurposing a building that had remained largely structurally sound after Nyssa al Ghul's bombing. If anyone looked too closely at her paperwork—or lack thereof—she'd be in trouble. The building wasn't hers in any legal sense. For all intents and purposes, she was trespassing on someone else's private property, but, luckily for her, the landlord had either not returned to check on his investments or decided to cut his losses. There was also, of course, the issue of the individuals she deigned to treat, mostly petty criminals and drug addicts and other victims of the systemic poverty and disenfranchisement that plagued the Narrows.

Jim had, so far, turned a blind eye on her work. They'd spoken about it in banally, glossing over the illegality of it, deciding that as long as neither of them actively brought their work home they couldn't technically find themselves in a conflict of interest. It was, they both knew, a terrible solution, but one that seemed to be working, though she hadn't had the pleasure of treating anyone truly notorious, yet. 

Even with Jim and, by extension, the rest of the GCPD, leaving her alone, it was exhausting work. There were other, more invasive groups who were prickly about what she was doing—going as far as to lobby and threaten her with legal action if she didn't shut down her operations and allow more renowned, and implicitly elitist and exclusionary, institutions to take over for her. 

No one cared about fixing the Narrows. Most people saw it as a lost cause.

Then came Bruce Wayne with his expansive fortune and charismatic smiles, driving away the sharks who had started to circle. 

His aid came from a place of great and glittering humanitarian interest—which from any other nineteen-year-old would have raised eyebrows, but from Bruce, who she'd watched, distantly, grow up into the generous man he was becoming, it fit well. But, as much as she liked Bruce and trusted that, in his own head, he thought he was doing what was right, she couldn't bring herself to be fully at ease with his funding, anonymous or not, until he'd drawn her aside one day, early on after the clinic was up and running.

He'd looked at her with eyes older than he should have had, and asked her, surprisingly timid, "Would it be possible for me to transfer Alfred's care here? I don't want to impose or take a bed from someone who needs it, I just—I don't trust the doctors at Gotham General." He paused them, catching the expression on her face and rushing to elaborate. "I don't think they'll—hurt him or anything. It's not malpractice that I'm worried about, it's greed. Some reporters have been sniffing around, trying to catch an exclusive about Alfred and me, and—I know it's stupid, but—"

"—It's not stupid," Lee assured him. She wished, not for the first time, to wrap a blanket around his shoulders and force him to rest. "I think trust issues are to be expected after the ordeal we've been through this past year." Not to mention, she had thought to herself, all that had happened to him before Gotham ripped itself apart. She continued. "Get me his physician's contact information and I'll see what I can do to organize a transfer." 

And that had been that.

Treating Alfred Pennyworth, a man she considered a friend, a  _good man_ by all accounts, was not something she would ever regret doing. Especially when she considered that the only reason he'd gotten hurt—broken T10 through T12 vertebrae and additional damage to the L1 and L2 vertebrae, minimal nerve damage, head injury—was to protect Barbara and her daughter from Bane and Nyssa al Ghul. 

If housing him semi-permanently in the clinic also gave her the opportunity to keep an eye on Bruce, well, what could she say? She protected her interests. 

Sometimes, though very rarely, her workload caught up with her. At a certain point, no amount of delegation could save her when the constant stress and tragedy of her livelihood became too much. Sometimes, she just had to take a break. She'd been in the middle of one, laying down on an exam table she'd repurposed and shoved in the corner of her office when there was a knock on her door. 

Whatever it was couldn't have been too important or one of her underlings would have paged her. At least, she hoped they would have had enough sense to page her.

She sighed. Then, she raised her voice into a shout, loud enough to be heard through the door. "Unless someone's dying, come back later!" 

There was no answer. Her door pushed open with a low squeak and Lee was in the process of counting down from ten slowly, fighting back her sudden, violent urge to perform a tracheostomy when the person who'd entered her office spoke up.

"Bad time?" 

It was Barbara.

Lee was up in a flash, moving none too gracefully, wiping her hands down her slacks, wondering why she was forced to be in a state of constant nerves whenever she saw Barbara. She looked as sharp as ever, wrapped up in a loud, feathered pink coat, a well-swaddled baby laying safely in her arms. The sight of them made something in her chest clench. 

"No, of course not. I just wasn't expecting you." She gestured at the seats that she kept on the opposite of her desk. "Please, make yourself comfortable."

Barbara walked farther into the room, her heels clicking pleasantly on the linoleum, but did not take the offered seat. Her face looked pinched, twisting itself into something like a scowl. "You weren't expecting me? You told me you could take Barbara Lee for the next few days. I have a business meeting in—"

"—Houston," Lee finished for her before her voice could raise itself any louder. She held back a curse. How could she have forgotten? "Right.  _Right_. I remember. Just lost track of time, that's all."

"Good thing, then, that I have punctuality down to an art," Barbara said, her face smoothing out. Her eyes remained hawkish. "Times like this really make me wonder how you'd get on without me."

Lee laughed, suddenly taken aback by the oddness of their stilted, polite exchange. Not too long ago, Barbara had tried to kill her. And here they were,  _co-parenting_. Slowly, she stood up and crossed the short distance between them, leaning against her desk, a picture of composure. 

"Oh, life would be much less exciting, that's for sure." It came out more barbed than she would have liked, so she redirected her focus onto Babs, offering a finger to the little girl. "And I wouldn't have the pleasure of this little one's company."

"Funny," Barbara said, with dull humor. She pushed herself even closer to her, shifting her arms to give Babs to Lee. It was a transfer they'd done dozens of times since the birth of the baby, but the novelty of it had yet to wear off. When Barbara spoke up again, her daughter had her full attention. "You'll be good for your Auntie Lee, won't you? What am I saying? Of course, you will. You're an absolute angel, just like your mother."

"That might be a matter of perspective," Lee said, her voice close to a whisper. There was something fragile hanging between them; something she didn't want to ruin.

"I'd say things worked out in the end."

She couldn't help but doubt the truth of that. Barbara may have publically resigned from her days running around as a mob boss, after dramatically closing down The Sirens in a widely attended ceremony—though that might have had more to do with the growing investigative scrutiny the premises were enduring as reunification slogged on—but, even now, Lee wasn't entirely sure if she believed Barbara was done with the crime world. She was, supposedly, working on rebuilding her father's old business endeavors—honest work, was what she'd called it when Jim asked. 

How much of that was true and how much of it she just said to clear up Jim's residual concern at raiding a child with a well-known criminal, Lee didn't know. All she really knew was Barbara would do anything to keep her daughter safe—and to keep herself out of Arkham or Blackgate, of course. And, considering the circumstances, Lee couldn't exactly fault her for it. Especially, when Lee herself was running an underground, borderline illegal, clinic. 

A year in hell changed people's priorities. Things that would have seemed reprehensible became—forgivable. It was growth. 

"They did, didn't they?" Lee said, a tentative smile blooming on her face. She wasn't comfortable, exactly, but she was content. Happy. 

"It surprises me sometimes," Barbara said, faint and low like she was sharing a secret. "If you'd told me five years ago that we'd be here, in this moment, I probably would've said that I needed to be readmitted. But, hey, life has a funny way of working itself out." She looked at Lee then, her eyes burning with something that felt too personal to see. "I have to jet, now, if I want to make my flight, but—good luck, Lee." 

Then, soft as a whisper, she kissed her cheek, before gliding out of the room, gone as quickly as she had come. 

Lee short-circuited. She stood, leaned against her desk with a baby in her arms, frozen for moments longer than she'd ever want to admit. She was hyper-aware of the skin on her cheek that Barbara had pressed her lips against. Worse, she was probably blushing. Her first instinct was to say several less than baby-friendly words. Her second was to, naturally, avoid the whirlwind of emotions that had begun to swirl around in her chest. 

It was about a quarter till noon. Lunchtime, almost. Little Babs and her would pick up burgers at the food truck that Jim liked so much and surprise him with lunch. It would be nice. If anything, Jim and his mountains of paperwork would get her mind off of Barbara Kean and her infuriating habit of getting under Lee's skin. 

Before they left the clinic, however, she'd have to stop by Alfred's room. 

She looked down at Babs, conspiratorially. "What do you think? Should we go get your Uncle Bruce?"

Babs smacked her gums together. Lee decided to take it as a yes. 

**Author's Note:**

> In this house, we LOVE (oblivious) pining and slow-burn character development! 
> 
> Feedback is always appreciated!


End file.
